Waiting for the Bunny or the Seder

Hearing that our species hasn’t been here

longer than two hundred thousand years
does not encourage any sense of continuity.

Easter’s coming in a kind of kindred malleable
unreliable and lunar way. Sometimes,
by the measure of what childhood memories

tell you ought to be in bloom, it comes too soon
or comes too late: but sometimes Easter
comes on time, and once again, although

we’ve only been here for two hundred thousand
years, we feel we rhyme and conjugate –
and everything about Eternity appears

to reconnoiter with the Soul. Aaron Copland’s
Appalachian Spring plays on the radio:
Jewish gay New Yorker telling everybody

what it sounds like to be utterly American –  
waiting for the bloom – for the bunny
or the Seder – for the holy feast or for the least

of Easter’s promises of continuity. Yearning
for it nears – hearing that we’ve only been
here for two hundred thousand years.






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